Beshalach

The Divided Sea: Natural or Supernatural? The splitting of the Reed Sea is engraved in Jewish memory. We recite it daily during the morning service, at the transition from the Verses of Praise to the beginning of communal prayer. We speak of it again after the Shema, just before the Amidah. It was the supreme miracle of […]

The Longer, Shorter Road At the end of his new book, ‘Tribe of Mentors’, Timothy Ferris cites the following poem by Portia Nelson. It’s called ‘Autobiography in Five Short Chapters’: Chapter 1: I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost… I am helpless. It […]

The Power of Ruach In September 2010, BBC, Reuters and other news agencies reported on a sensational scientific discovery. Researchers at US National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado have shown through computer simulation how the division of the red sea may have taken place. Using sophisticated modelling, they demonstrated how a […]

Renewable Energy The first translation of the Torah into another language – Greek – took place in around the second century BCE, in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy II. It is known as the Septuagint, in Hebrew Hashiv’im, because it was done by a team of seventy scholars. The Talmud however says that at various […]

The Face of Evil After 9/11, when the horror and trauma had subsided, Americans found themselves asking what had happened and why. Was it a disaster? A tragedy? A crime? An act of war? It did not seem to fit the pre-existing paradigms. And why had it happened? The question most often asked about Al […]

Looking Up The Israelites had crossed the Red Sea. The impossible had happened. The mightiest army in the ancient world – the Egyptians with their horse-drawn chariots – had been defeated and drowned. The people were now free. But the relief proved short-lived. Almost immediately they faced attack by the Amalekites, and they had to […]

To be a Leader of the Jewish People That day, God saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians… The Israelites saw the great power God had displayed against the Egyptians, and the people were in awe of God. They believed in God and in His servant Moses. Moses and the Israelites then sang this […]

Music, Language of the Soul For the first time since their departure from Egypt the Israelites do something together. They sing. “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel.” Rashi, explaining the view of R. Nehemiah in the Talmud (Sotah 30b) that they spontaneously sang the song together, says that the holy spirit rested on […]

The Power of Ruach In September 2010, the BBC, Reuters and other news agencies reported on a sensational scientific discovery. Researchers at US National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado have shown through computer simulation how the division of the red sea may have taken place. By sophisticated modeling, they’ve demonstrated how […]

Miracles The division of the Red Sea is engraved in Jewish memory. We recite it daily in the morning service, at the transition from the Verses of Praise to the beginning of communal prayer. We speak of it again after the Shema, just before the Amidah. It was the supreme miracle of the exodus. But […]